BMC, UNICEF to raise quality of municipal schools in Mumbai

The Brihamumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Monday to raise the quality of education in the city’s civic schools.

The Brihamumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Monday to raise the quality of education in the city’s civic schools.

This will be done through the School Excellence Programme (SEP) to be implemented in all 1,327 BMC schools.

Municipal Commisioner Swadheen Kshatriya said in the past few years there had been an alarming deterioration in the quality of education in civic schools. The dwindling number of students was a matter of concern too. “Through this initiative, we will try to address these problems,” Kshatriya said.

The interventions in the SEP aim to increase student attendance, pass percentages and to reduce dropout rates. They were devised after studying the processes of 400 public schools.

“The journey of schools from bad-to-average to good-to-best was observed and the changes they adopted to achieve their goals were studied and included in our set-up,” said Additional Municipal Commissioner Ashish Kumar Singh.

The BMC will conduct competency tests for its students to gauge where they stand and then plan the interventions.

The test will be conducted this month; such tests will be repeated periodically to check the efficiency of the interventions. UNICEF will give the BMC financial assistance of Rs 9 crore for the project.